Intertwingler

» How Jordan Mechner Made a Different Sort of Interactive Movie (or, The Virtues of Restraint) The Digital Antiquarian

One can learn much about the state of computer gaming in any given period by looking to the metaphors its practitioners are embracing. In the early 1980s, when interfaces were entirely textual and graphics crude or nonexistent, text adventures like those of Infocom were heralded as the vanguard of a new interactive literature destined to augment or entirely supersede non-interactive books. That idea peaked with the mid-decade bookware boom, when just about every entertainment-software publisher (and a few traditional book publishers) were rushing to sign established authors and books to interactive projects. It then proceeded to collapse just as quickly under the weight of its own self-importance when the games proved less compelling and the public less interested than anticipated.

Calm Technology

Bits flowing through the wires of a computer network are ordinarily invisible. But a radically new tool shows those bits through motion, sound, and even touch. It communicates both light and heavy network traffic. Its output is so beautifully integrated with human information processing that one does not even need to be looking at it or near it to take advantage of its peripheral clues. It takes no space on your existing computer screen, and in fact does not use or contain a computer at all. It uses no software, only a few dollars in hardware, and can be shared by many people at the same time. It is called the "Dangling String".

Substrates conference series - Substrates 2026

An increasing number of researchers see their work as interactive authoring tools or software substrates for interactive computational media. By talking about “authoring tools”, we remove the divide between programmers and users; “software substrates” let us look beyond conventional programming languages and systems; and “interactive computational media” promises a more malleable and adaptable notion of tools for thought we are striving for. This workshop aims to bring together a wide range of perspectives on these matters.

The Computer for the 21st Century

Specialized elements of hardware and software, connected by wires, radio waves and infrared, will be so ubiquitous that no one will notice their presence

Design outside the computer

Your digital UI can come from the physical world.

The Soul of a New Machine

The computer revolution brought with it new methods of …

under the hood

This week I’ve been thinking about what it’s like for a new generation to make things with computers. When we were talking in Berlin, Luce made a point that...

Our interfaces have lost their senses

We programmed them by punching cards, plugging in wires, and flipping switches. Programmers walked among banks of switches and cables, physically choreographing their logic. Being on a computer used to be a full-body experience.

how do you a call a person who is interacting with digital media ?

We use tools from computer science, media design, and digital art to study massive cultural data sets. Directed by Dr. Lev Manovich.

<i>Webstrates</i>: Shareable Dynamic Media

Shareable Dynamic Media is our vision for an interactive computing environment that blurs the distinction between documents and applications, characterized by three key properties: malleability, so that users can appropriate and repurpose media in ...

Feeling of Computing — Conversations

Liberatory Computing

We live under a capitalist mode of computing. The tools, languages, techniques, and assumptions of digital systems are structured by economic forces that shape not just what we can do, but what we can imagine doing. By separating production from use, producing inflexible software, and slicing up computing into siloed apps, your agency is held back by a tech industry that profits from a population rendered computationally passive.

Liberatory Computing

We live under a capitalist mode of computing. The tools, languages, techniques, and assumptions of digital systems are structured by economic forces that shape not just what we can do, but what we can imagine doing. By separating production from use, producing inflexible software, and slicing up computing into siloed apps, your agency is held back by a tech industry that profits from a population rendered computationally passive.